After a decade of fighting in Afghanistan, at tremendous cost in American blood and treasure, many Americans are now asking: Why are we there? What do we have to show for our efforts? The answers are troubling: A government, under President Hamid Karzai, that is corrupt, largely incompetent, and of questionable loyalty; inept Afghan security forces that regularly turn their weapons on their American and NATO advisers; and a resurgent Taliban poised to regain control of the country after U.S. forces withdraw. Many look at these facts and conclude that the U.S. cant win in Afghanistan and should therefore get out. But few have examined the dire consequences of losing.

-excerpt-

Many say that the American people, after ten years, are tired of the war in Afghanistan. But I believe Americans  and certainly the U.S. military  are tired of not winning. The U.S. is in dire need of a serious shift in strategy  from one that props up a corrupt and incompetent Afghan government and simply trains and equips its security forces, to one that smashes our enemies, the Taliban and al-Qaeda. America must allow U.S. combat forces, now largely restricted to defensive actions, to take the offensive, rout the enemy from safe havens in Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas, radically reduce the Talibans military capability, and then declare victory (which, be it noted, President Obama failed to do in Iraq) and bring our troops home.

We lost the moment the idiot Bush and his chief dhimmi Karen Hughes starting bleating on about “girls can go to school again!!!”, and off the track we went.

Hmmmm, interesting point and post. Wonder if Karen Hughes was the authoress of our problem as you say -- and pushed Bush over the edge into "nation-building", which we said, I thought, we were not going to do?

And this goes back to something I've been wondering about: can a feminized country do anything right?

We kicked the Taliban’s ass and taught the state supporters of terrorism a lesson that they only now are beginning to forget. I’d say the war in Afghanistan (and Iraq) bought the West a decade of freedom from the most egregious acts of terrorism on its own soil.

22
posted on 04/09/2012 5:58:36 AM PDT
by Mr Ramsbotham
(Laws against sodomy are honored in the breech.)

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the root of the problem. You cannot force a feudal society of tribes and warlords who practice a vile, hateful religion and considers the rape of young boys as perfectly acceptable to live in the modern world if THEY DON’T WANT TO!

They enjoy being ignorant and perverse and THEY WILL NEVER CHANGE BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE TELLS THEM TO.

This is a fight to the death and thanks to our poor leadership, they are winning.

Well, that will sure answer the "was it worth it?" question, won't it? And the answer will be "NO", never mind that they started it by killing 3000 of our people out of a clear blue sky -- and we are going to let them finish it? And give them bragging rights?

1. Agent Orange all food crops. 2. Infect all cattle with Mad Cow Disease, leave the pigs alone. 3. Infect all fowl with avian influenza...leave the pigs alone. 4. Allow above to propagate, then send care packages seeded with Small Pox. 5. Allow all of the above to further propagate. 6. Infect all bodies of water with red tide algae. 7.Allow all of the above to propagate. 8. Allow Catholic Church to feed the populace, at the first sign of anti-christian behavior, stop feeding them. 9. Repeat as necessary. 10. Introduce civilization.

We should never have gotten into Afghanistan.
In a thousand years, nobody has ever been successful at a land war in that region.
We should have just bombed them into oblivion and come home.
If we really needed to target specific individuals, that should have been done by the CIA on a personal level.

The basic problem is that we as a people aren't willing to accept the brutalness of war anymore, and have tried to reform it into something else which our history has shown doesn't work. We should have just destroyed the cities and people of Afghanistan like history has shown us is how to win wars. That would have also stopped a lot of our current conflicts, and sent a real message to our enemies that we mean business. If we insist on getting involved on the ground we should have brought Afghanistan into modern age with pure brutality and the banning of Islam.

Instead we just embolden small weak nations that they can always count on us to restrict ourselves to defeat no matter how well trained our troops are, or how advanced our weaponry is because of self imposed restrictions. History is full of wars and how to win and lose them. We don't have to be as brutal as some in history, but it can only go so far before you are hindering yourself. Even in WW2 guys like General Patton got in trouble for stating obvious truths about war. We like to romanticize it instead of accepting the truths of it that we all know. We are so obsessed with the lives of civilians, many who are sympathizers, to the point we will lose the war to spare a life. That doesn't make us a great moral people, but an ignorant people. Accept war for what it is or don't support it. Those who support wars and the ridiculous ways we now fight them are the worst people, and responsible for many lost lives and a weakened nation. The war could still be won in a short and brutal fashion, but that's not going to happen. We will just lose it.

Having been there, as I’m sure many on FR have been, I learned a few things. But one of the most poignant was that in order for anything to happen in Afghanistan that would be considered positive, in Western standards, it would probably take at least 2 generations.

You’re talking about educating a country where they wipe their asses with their hands, they sell their daughters, the tribal leader is more important than anyone else, kids mean nothing - especially girls and the grandaddy’s of them all(IMHO) are the concept of “Pashtun Man Love” and the rampant pedophilia - directed toward boys.

Most people in the western, civilized world couldn’t comprehend the savagery that is every day life in that country and never will.

Aaaannnnndddddddd....on top of all of that, the entire political, religious and socio-economic system is run by a bunch of thugs that hide behind their religion when its convenient for them. as does Islam in general.

Actually you can force them to change, but it takes a very brutal policy. Civilizations use to force others to change culturally and religiously by making laws that aren't in accordance with their beliefs and enforcing it with torturous death against those who refuse to reform. The entire world has been changed this way when we look at history. We have the military power that we could have banned Islam and burned every mosque to the ground in Afghanistan while taking complete control, but it would also have taken a brutality we don't even think about these days. One of the ones I happen to disagree with us abandoning is the killing and destruction of the enemies family and property. It might be bad, but letting a possible insurgent, or person just looking for a payday, know they are getting every single member of their family involved makes a difference. We should have sat up brutal pro-U.S. governments in Iraq and Afghanistan instead of trying to bring democracy to animals. We should have taken oil from Iraq because it's a hell of a lot more important to fight for than whatever the hell it is we did.

Exactly. When Bush started the 'religion of peace' bullcrap and encouraged us to go shopping instead of joining up, I knew we were in deep sh--.

He could have raised the armed forces back to Cold War levels in an instant and annihilated the enemy, starting with Syria and moving east to Peshawar.

Instead we got lip quivering sentimentality and 'nation building' with savages abroad and tolerance for traitors in the opposition party and the press at home. Eight years and he couldn't send Khalid Sheik Mohammed to the gallows-- what a joke.

We will never win as long as our morally bankrupt elite cherishes their idiotic illusions more than their country and reality.

Tuer les tous Dieu connaisera les siens.

37
posted on 04/09/2012 7:22:50 AM PDT
by pierrem15
(Claudius: "Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.")

“The only thing left for this is the final picture - the helicopter taking off from the roof of the US Embassy. It will be blamed on Bush.”

It will be his fault along with others, including our next President, because it can still be won with overwhelming force. The fact is the war should have, and could have, been over while Bush was in office. He didn't unleash the full U.S. military without restriction on their use of power while forgetting about nation building. He sent them in with the same unrealistic ways for victory, and our next President will be to blame for our lose or continued policy of fighting to lose, unless there is a dramatic change in policy. Those aren't the only two options no matter how unlikely it is we will actually ever see our military unleashed for total war. We should win the war the way we should have to begin with, and we all know that isn't going to happen. We pullout or stay put getting our guys killed for what we made mean nothing.

I would like to see someone finally admit that we were naive in thinking we could build a civilized pro-American nation in Afghanistan, and have now halted those plans for an all-out destruction of the nation and Taliban strongholds in Pakistan.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.